Homerton Hospital brings thousands of people to this street who didn't choose to be here.

Homerton

A medieval village core, a Tudor house, and a hospital that decides half the street's customers.

Sutton House, at 2 and 4 Homerton High Street, was built in 1535 by Sir Ralph Sadleir, an aide to Thomas Cromwell. It's the oldest house in Hackney, owned and run by the National Trust, and has served over the centuries as a Victorian school, a First World War church institute, a trade union office in the 1960s and 1970s, and a squat in the 1980s. Homerton High Street itself was the medieval village core, redeveloped in the 1880s. Homerton Hospital grew from the Eastern Fever Hospital, established in September 1870 with 200 beds for typhus, scarlet fever and enteric fever; its original buildings were demolished in 1982 and Homerton University Hospital opened on the site in 1986.

A few streets north, Chatsworth Road runs its own, different trade: independent shops and an established Sunday market, though no launch date for it is confirmed. Chats Palace, built as a Carnegie library in 1912-13, became a community arts centre after the council closed it in 1976. Homerton station reopened in 1985, having closed in 1944.

The hospital changes who's actually on Homerton High Street. Patients, visitors and staff are here for a reason that has nothing to do with shopping, often at odd hours, often without knowing the area at all, and what they search for is whatever is open, close and quick to understand. The businesses that win that search are specific about hours and walking distance from the hospital or the station, rather than assuming anyone here already knows them.